Lost Camera Floats 530 Miles

Do you know that awful feeling when, after you've climbed into the boat, you find your camera's gone missing? British diver Adele Devonshire, 37, was diving off St. Abbs in Scotland in 2013 when she discovered that the clip attaching the waterproof case holding her Fuji camera in its waterproof case to her BCD had snapped. After an extensive yet unsuccessful search of the shoreline, she gave up hope of ever seeing it again.

This July, she was astonished when she saw an online post by Lars Mossberg, 57, who found it sitting atop a rock on the shore of Gullholmen, the small Swedish island where he lives. He had posted some of the photographs recorded in the camera on a social media website called 'Lost at Sea.' It took only five hours to find Devonshire after a pal whom she'd been with when she lost it three years earlier recognized the pictures.

After finding it among the sea grass and shells along the rocky coastline, Mossberg took the camera home, not expecting it to work. It was only after he'd dried it out and pried open the case that he discovered the camera was unharmed and still fully functional -- with around 500 pictures stored on its memory card.

Hearing English spoken by the voice on some of the movie sequences, he deduced its owner must have been British, and hence, posted on an English language site. Devonshire said, "I never did replace it, so I'm really looking forward to getting it back. It's been on quite a [530 mile] journey," having floated past Denmark and Norway to the Swedish coastline.

A British diver, John Bird from Nottingham, lost his camera in exactly the same place two years previously and says he contacted Mossberg on reading of Devonshire's luck, in case the Swede spotted another one, but he wasn't so lucky!